


sheep into the plain

by digitalis



Category: Battle of Tollense River c. 1250 bce
Genre: Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Mythology - Freeform, Slavery, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:15:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digitalis/pseuds/digitalis
Summary: A bend in the river, three thousand years ago.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellen_fremedon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/gifts).



> Warnings: not many. references to slavery and abuse but no onscreen gore. End notes contain major spoilers.

Essem was a warrior. Wasn't he? He didn't feel like it. He'd raided, yes, gone to other villages with the others and come back with a few horses or a black eye. He'd been in a skirmish or two. But he didn't - did that count? He had no idea. He supposed he was the reverse of his sister. His sister had, for the past two years, been raising a baby girl. Not hers. Orphan of a dead friend from the next valley. Lucky the mother had died past weaning. Byerek's little girl called her Ma and all the rest that it meant, and you could by rights admit that she, having never quickened, wasn't truly a mother, but Byerek would kill you if you said that and she wouldn't be the only one streaking fire. Byerek was west, away from this madness. He shouldn’t think about her.

Anny left no doubt. Anny claimed to have seen troops of this sort before. Or not this sort exactly but maybe half of half of the number. Essem couldn't believe that. The fires on the plains stretched unending; they‘d walked for hours around the perimeter of the camp, and there were more across the river. He had never seen - but Anny had gone down the vale and passed among the horses and come back up to the copse at the ridge. He had a grass stalk between his lips and he pulled it out through the gap in his teeth. He was nervous but not as nervous as Essem. "You say, never has this happened.”

“I say that.”

“But my father went to war, just like this."

"All right."

"On a." Anny furrowed. He talked weird, still. "Mickel boat. Mickel, mickel. He stayed away for a year and came back laden. You know what he said?"

"What did he say?"

"There was a host, like this." Anny snapped his wrist towards the dale and it was as if he included the world. "I saw them. With my father. I don't know why all they came together - "

"All...?"

Anny snapped again. "All..."

"Tribes? Bands?"

"No, that's...They have the...Oh. Chiefs. That isn't the right word. In my words it's - " Anny said a word Essem didn't know. "But you don't know that. But the men who follow the chiefs."

"Warriors."

"Ugh, I don't have the words. Yes, but more than that. Men follow. You know."

Essem blinked, and understood. "Ah. Oathmen."

"Oath. Yes. Um. I saw the little boats, coming from the islands, to the boats. Huge boats, huge, huge." Anny chewed on the stalk. "I don't know why - I heard, once, later, that a queen had been killed, and her killer went across the sea, to the...not a settlement, bigger, means more…like a barrow, but for living people, of his family...but that can't be it. That's not a war. That's a little fight for blood. You have the word."

"Feud."

"Yes." Anny pulled another stalk from the grass. "My father, he was away five moonturns. Comes back and he's rich. Great warrior, my mother says. But he says, no, Elovi, my love. No."

Essem thought about the raid down the west river last winter. Early frost. They'd been hungry. They’d taken cattle from a farmstead outside the oathlord's boundaries, had Essem and his cousins. They'd rattled up the hill singing songs, relieved to be relieved, and there to meet them were the cousins of the robbed, and they were just as hungry. There'd been a fight. Spears shaken and it didn't end like usual and Essem had wiped his hands on the grass but the red didn't come out under his fingernails. It turned black after a few hours, crusted up. He picked out the crust with an arrowpoint. And then he didn't eat for two days. He‘d killed wolves and bears before and hunted at the same pace as his cousins but – a wolf didn‘t also have cousins, or a mother sat up waiting. "War is ugly."

"Yes. No, no, not that. He comes - sails. The boat comes onshore and their, the chief, his warriors, they come to this barrow. Imagine." Anny took in the world again. "Imagine, all of these, living in one place."

"Impossible."

Anny shrugged. "Imagine half and half that. I've seen that. I’m from that.”

Essem couldn’t ever say the word _liar._ Not to Anny. Anny had seen everything; he knew more. That didn't mean Essem didn't think it sometimes. "But how would you feed even half and half that?"

"Winter isn't as harsh on the warm sea. Anyways my father come – came, sorry. Came. To this barrow, where come had all the chiefs, and the boats. Build of stone. And the stone came down, crack, to the earth. My father didn't see it but the early chiefs saw it. I saw it when I was young. Earth pulls apart - " Anny demonstrated, spreading his fingers - "and there is fire, there is a snake's breath from the earth, and the people flee from the fire and from the warriors. Enaysdawon's luck, earthcracker wrathful, the chiefs say, but my father said he wasn’t sure."

"Why?"

"What god just gives you a fruit tree that is ripe, no worms in the fruit?"

Essem didn’t think of gods except to burn the portion to feed them. They made his head hurt. He drew his cloak tight around him. "Who knows what the gods do?"

"They don't do that," Anny said, firm. He looked down the valley. "Imagine, you stay in one place, all year, and there are that many. Imagine, how rich must be the stores. How lucky are the weavers they do not have to drag their wool around and dirty it. Imagine, Ess, the gold. I came from half and half again and we had gold enough. Imagine how much more." He dandled the stalk. "My father, and every other warrior, and every chief, they look through that burned barrow and they take. Half these men, and my father isn't a chief, and he had to fight for his share like every man. And he came home with so much gold, Ess! So much. And weavings and jewels! Is this why they're here?"

"Is - what?"

Anny tsked. He reached over and touched the golden coil holding Essem's braid in place. He gestured to the valley.

"Oh," Essem said, and felt stupid. Anny couldn't talk right and he still made Essem feel stupid. "I...don't think that's it."

"That has to be a part."

"It can't be the whole."

Anny rested his head on his knee. “It isn’t,” he allowed. “But a man is a warrior for gold. Or.” He nudged Essem’s foot. “For cattle.”

“True.”

“The dead don’t eat cattle. Or…come by the thousands. Away from the good lands. You remember the dead. So your children see, remember you when you are dead. But they left their children. They went away.” Anny scraped his knuckles against his face, suddenly faraway. “Away from the sea and the warm. The dead wouldn’t – come north.” He scraped harder. “Why does anyone go north?”

“Anny. Are you all right?" Anny had gone high-pitched and that never boded well. Essem touched his arm. "What are you saying?”

"There are men in the valley from my home," Anny said, and clacked his jaw shut.

Essem’s face burned.

Once, about when Byerek became a ma, Essem had decided to go north and west. The traders from the shore had hinted about the availability of amber. He'd seen the sea as a child and he’d held a vague desire to see it again; might as well take the excuse. And Anny had bought his freedom by then and he'd heard sea and bloomed a childish excitement. It took two and a half days struggling through the forest but they found the sea and Essem was fascinated by its hugeness. Anny stood on the shore. Essem jogged his shoulder. He said “See, the sea!” It was a sea and Anny had missed the sea like a fish but it was the wrong sea, the _wrong_ sea: the wrong dolphins, the wrong whales breaching the surface. The water splashing up on his sandals carried strange sands and the eternal cold and he wept inconsolable for the sunskimmed waters left behind. _Someday,_ he said, in between his sobs, but there would be no someday and they both knew it.

Essem made sure they camped away from the beach. He gave the amber he found to Anny, as apology, and Anny lengthened their journey back because he kept collapsing against the trees to wail. _Matir matir,_ he kept saying, _podnyas matir._ Essem‘s mother, welcoming them back, assumed he’d picked up some grievous wound. Anny never cried.

Essem looked at him. Tried to gauge his intentions. Anny had come down through the summer and into fall. He’d stayed with Essem’s family. There’d been discussion about finding him a bride. Certainly none of Essem’s girl cousins would object. Byerek wouldn’t object. Anny had no qualms about hard work, and he could thatch a hut, and he was well-formed. A back completely unscarred, so no one would know he’d been a slave. Anny wasn’t objectionable as a husband or an oathbrother but Anny didn’t – Anny said “I am a young man.” Which was – true, he was Essem’s age, maybe a year older, but – Byerek was a year younger than Anny and she’d had a husband. He’d been born away on the same illness that had taken her girl’s first ma. No one had considered Byerek and Nebfer too young to join the hands. “I am a young man,” Anny said. That was true, but how many old men did anyone see?

To hear Anny tell it, many.

Anny: rocking back in forth in front of the fire between the ringed huts, singing a song in his words. And then he’d open his eyes and tell his tales. What he had seen, being traded. What mysteries there were in the world. Forests and plains and valleys and islands and fires and men and women and horses and chiefs and riches and things that made Essem anxious, because they did not fit in his head. The gods didn’t fit in his head either and for a time he’d been afraid because _what if_ – but that was silly. Anny had to be a man. Anny had to be just a man, because he lied.

Anny gave out his history and his lineage every chance he had. So he wouldn't forget, Essem thought. And he sang and he told his tales and he said he was chosen for his strength but – Essem did not like to think of the reason he had first been stolen. He had fed well enough as a child that even the privations of slavery begun in late adolescence could not mask that he was tall and broad at the shoulder. Even in a land where his general shape would be unremarkable. You couldn’t see otherwise. You could look at his unscarred back. And that kept. A warrior – you _kept_ warriors, and you were proud of them. You took warriors from your sons and raised them on mother‘s milk and father‘s blood. They proved the strength of both. And you didn‘t trust a slave to go on a raid. But Essem had seen men be bored with wives, and you didn‘t necessarily have to keep a wife. And Anny never shut up about the richness of the sea. And if men had enough to spare that they could leave their families for two seasons and come back without incident, then they could notice Anny’s eyelashes.

Essem, of the starveling north, had noticed them.

Anny made him sick. Not just thinking about what had happened to him, how evil it had been to come north, almost to the sea, in less than two years. The terror of being passed hand to hand like a bead. Anny, Anny the man, made Essem _sick._ Essem didn’t consider himself wise but Anny said the fact that he didn’t meant he had to be. Essem didn’t know if he was a warrior and Essem’s responsibilities ranged only to cattle and keeping Byerek fed. Growing enough to justify sharing with his cousins. Essem was any man: he pastured his cattle, he owned a single beautiful bronze longknife worked at the hilt with gold, he knapped arrowheads and hunted ducks and thatched his house. He mourned the dead and prayed to the ancestors and made his obeisances to the gods at midsummer. A man like any other. Anny of the dark and piercing eyes was not. Could not be.

Anny bought his freedom from Essem’s father’s cousin’s cousin and then immediately killed him. Essem stopped it there. He hadn’t, not really, but he’d given Anny enough time to explain. Anny, dripping, calm, bowed his head. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said, to the frozen assembled. “I know it wasn’t his fault. He is good enough. He was the end of the chain. But still, the chain. I had to.” He dropped the knife and spread his arms. “Whatever you would like. I say I die free, and I’m free. Go ahead.”

They hadn’t.

Anny had noticed the silence. He looked at Essem, awkward. Essem didn’t know what to do with his hands. He laced his fingers together. “You’ll leave, then?”

“Yes.” The immediacy stung. Anny laughed, untouched by his usual irony. “If any of them live. A few must. So I’ll leave when they’re done. Why are they here?”

“Did you talk to any of them?”

“Yes, of course! But they don’t say, I am here for this one reason. They say _look at my horse.”_

The horses – Essem had seen the horses. From the south, some of them, and longer-legged and slimmer than the horses Essem knew, but most were of stocky breed. If Essem was a northman, they were northern horses. Bought? Stolen? They’d heard gossip of raids, that’s why they’d come to the river at the first, but – Essem knew like he knew to breathe that even if this host had stolen all the horses from every stead in ten days’ walk, they wouldn’t have enough. And the horses hadn’t been stolen. And an army of this size should have stripped the land of harvest but they hadn’t. They’d brought food. There hadn't been raids but there should have been raids but there _weren't._ Essem chewed his lip. “They’re going to fight, we know that much.”

“Yes. But who? Why here? There’s something wrong in the south, I hold. I talk to a man and it took him three moonturns to get here. That’s a season. I ask, are you slaves? He says no. I ask are you command come here, are there chiefs? He said…” Anny rocked his hand back and forth. “He said, I chose, and no chief may command me.”

“Then…”

Anny stuck his tongue in the side of his mouth. Essem could see him assembling the words, piece by piece.

“You see the banners,” Anny said at last.

Essem did see the banners. On horsehides, on cowhides, painted on cloth, woven, dyed, faded. They spiked through the camp. Sigils he did not understand. A deep blue, some of them, the like of which he’d never seen.

“I – came here. And a man came _from_ here. He had…” Anny kept pulling on his words; he wasn’t trying to get them right, Essem realized. He didn’t want to say them. “He. You sacrifice.”

“Yes.”

“On midwinter and midsummer and in between the seasons. When the stars say. When the wisewoman says. Yes. And there are the festivals. And I think…this man, he come from up here. There are other ways to do the festivals. For the spirits. We all know that. Every host has different – I have the earthcracker and his bride, their family, and you…”

“The spirits? Lord Thanur? The – ”

“Yes,” Anny said. “Uh. I think that is it. A man – he says a god spoke to him. That isn’t – that’s – the gods, all the time, they talk, of course. But this one spoke very loud and the man had to go everywhere to speak what it said. And he persuaded. Come here. And there were arguments about what he means. Him or what spoke to him.” Anny pulled another stalk from the ground. “I think that’s what’s happening. I’ve seen that before.”

“So is this like…” Essem was somehow relieved. “When, you know, at midsummer, there’s the wrestling? And the races and the horsefights and the sparring? And the – is that what this is? To honor a god?” He whistled. “Must be a powerful god, yeah? For all this sparring.”

Anny looked at him for a while.

“They have bronze on their spears,” he said.

“Bronze?”

“They aren’t sparring.”

“Oh. Well. I knew that. I think.”

Anny pointed downriver, past the encampments, to where the valley narrowed. Essem hadn’t been down there yet. There had been a bridge maintained in the valley in years past, he knew, when his father was a boy. When there’d been the split settlement. But there had been a wildfire and a few hard years and the settlements faded as people fled out onto the plains. The bridge hadn’t seen use since then. “I talked to a man and another man. And another. And they say, that’s where. That’s where we fight, they say.”

“Why there?”

Anny shrugged. “We can look?”

Essem didn’t particularly want to walk through the silent camp. The fires blotting out the sun. But they stayed back from the river, he had to admit – they stayed back about the length a man could walk in half an hour. Essem unfolded from his perch on the grass. Anny, when he’d gone down, hadn’t been down long. Dusk still a ways off. They had time.

Walking towards the riverbank felt odd. As if walking a path girdled by watching wolves. They weren’t hungry so they wouldn’t attack but they were still there. Fires, banners, on either side of the stream. Men who looked like Essem. Men who looked like Anny. They didn’t look up. Essem spotted a woman well-clad in fur and flax coming down to the stream with pails. She didn’t look like Essem or Anny. She filled her pails without getting her skirts wet. Anny said “Hey” and then something in his own language and she had to have heard them, had to have seen them at least, but she took her pails and went up the very slight slope towards the tents.

“Do women fight here?”

“Anny. You’ve been here – ” Essem caught himself before he ferreted out a number. “You’ve been here long enough to know.”

“Not do, then. _Will._ And not _here_. In what’s happening.”

“I have no idea. Go ask.” Essem nearly tripped on a root and straightened himself. “Is there anyone from around here?”

“Ye-es…but not _here._ Not from – there are settlements just over the river, did you know?”

“They meet us at midsummer…yes. But I’ve never been.”

“I talk to a few people speak like you but not – not _really_ like you, you know? They’re from far east. Far west. Hard to ken.”

They left the camp behind. The valley narrowed, and kept narrowing. Essem felt trammeled. He nudged Anny. “Where did they say it’d be? Here?”

“No. North. Right before the water falls down.”

“There’s a waterfall?” Essem hadn't heard anything.

Anny shrugged. “They said it’s little.”

They walked. They kept walking. The valley narrowed and narrowed, and the slopes came steeper. They came down to the place just before the waterfall, tiptoe, nearly sliding. Essem had a bird singing vile songs in the cage of his heart. He went slower, and slower, caution borne not from the dampness on the slope but the horror of it. They came to the waterfall and it wasn’t a waterfall but just a drop the span of a man’s arm. A choke point. It ran far into the distance before beginning, just at the edge of Essem’s vision, to widen anew. Choke. Essem stood there, a bone in the throat. The choke  – how had – they _had_ to know about the choke, the silent warriors collected back in the wider valley. This wasn't a valley now. It didn't deserve such a large word. It was a ditch. A swampy ditch cut by a river deceptively deep. A man could dash across it in ten, eleven breaths. A horse in much less time. But the horse would be spiderwebbed by the steepness.

What that meant had been blooming in Essem and he was nauseated. He thought about the fires – the hundreds, the _thousands_ of fires, like nuts collected after the harvest – and he had to crouch over to steady himself. Anny didn’t get it. Anny looked at him, and looked, and then it hit, and he whimpered. “Ess.”

Essem couldn’t move.

“ _Ess._ ” Anny seized Essem’s bicep. His eyes were very wide. “They’re going to die.”

“Don’t say that,” Essem hissed. He meant to hook out of his crouch. He could not. “Don’t – ”

“They are. Oh, shining Enaysdawon. Every spirit. _Essem_. What are they doing here? I don‘t understand this!” Anny clutched at his hair.  “Why would you come so far? Why would anyone come so far to die? _Why are they doing this?”_

Essem scrambled up the slope opposite, as if the terror would be lessened from a different angle. It was worse. He collapsed against the side, his heart thrumming. “We have to stop them…”

“Essem. Essem! We can’t stop them! Look at how far they’ve come!” Anny was frantic, tearing at himself. He looked almost comical. “This is going to be a, a – the _bones_ , Essem, the bones…”

Essem didn’t understand but he did. Anny was near about to rend his face. He stopped himself and sobbed once and said “I can’t be here. I can’t – we have to go.” He could barely run, the ground was so soft, but he made an effort. “We have to go. I can’t be here.”

Essem went.

Anny’s raging fear stayed in him past the valley spreading. He couldn’t run but he kept trying to and Essem had to catch him and tell him to breathe. Anny breathed and then he ran anew. Essem could barely follow him. They ran through the camp (Essem noticed no glances their way) and up, up, up to the edge of the hill where they had hidden, up to the copse where they had spent the past three days, watching this enormous host come together. Like maggots on a corpse, Essem thought, and revulsion encircled his heart.

They came, finally, after what seemed like years, heaving and exhausted, to their watching-place, the hill copse. Anny lay down on the ground and he splayed himself out. He didn’t cry. Essem wanted to cry looking at him. He’d come up from his journey into the camp nervous but not as nervous as Essem and Essem hadn’t known why and Essem knew why now. Hope. He’d hoped. He’d thought –

 _It’s the_ _wrong sea_ –

It came to Essem then. The sea and the river and the choke. He sat down heavily on the grass. He put his hand on Anny’s arm. “Anny.”

Anny had his hand over his eyes.

“Anny. Anny? Look, Anny. How the river flows.”

Anny lifted his head. Essem pointed down the vale and Anny sat up. From the bog, the river bled true and fast. Fast enough that it could power over the sandbanks clustered to the south. And then further down, the river ran true, true and true, until a day and a half walking and it drained into the lake. Essem steadied himself. His voice came out creaking. “After – whatever happens. However it happens. They’ll stick in that valley but some of them will, will flow downstream. They're rich. They have horses.”

Anny shook his head. “There will be survivors.”

“Yes. But I don‘t think there will be many. They all came up here to that, that stranglehold…I think they expect to die.”

“But _why_?” Anny had a tear on the word. Like a knife had slit up his throat. He snuffled, cuffed at his eyes. “Why would they bother?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Anny. Hey. Look at me. _Anaxitho._ ” Essem rarely spoke his name in full and Anny looked at him, surprised. Essem took a deep breath, steadied himself. “Anny. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they all die. I promise. Because.”

He pointed at the river. At the sandbanks.

“They’ll die. And they’ll, they’ll wash up. And – it’s like, you know, it’s like that story your father told you. Picking up after the barrow breaks apart? You can pick up gold, Anny, and – You still have that amber?”

Anny laughed. "You know I do."

“You can still go home. Okay. You can be.” Essem dredged the words out of his head. “Anaxitho Ehodu.”

“Ehodusuyo,” Anny said. He bit his nails. “Maybe. No. We should just go back. It will frost in maybe three days.”

Essem was surprised at that guess. It had been cold, yes, but they were barely down into autumn. “It – what? No. That’s too early. It won’t frost.”

“It frosted early last year. Remember? Killed half your cousin’s fields? Hegleud’s?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“And then the – we were hungry, and you and Hegleud and – ” Anny remembered that Essem didn’t like thinking about that raid and backtracked. “We are three days east. We should be back before the frost.”

“But they brought their own food.”

“Yes! So when it runs out – they’ll – they’ll be hungry. They’ll find Byerek…and your mother…”

“No they won't. They’re all going to die.” 

Anny lay back on the ground with his legs folded.

“We should wait. Wait for them to – it’ll be over soon.” Essem scratched his head. “And, I don’t know. It’s too late to set out, anyways. It’ll be dark soon.”

Anny sighed. He didn’t sit up. He hugged himself, rocked a little.

 _“Mins,”_ he said.

“What?”

 _“Mins._ It marks – means, sorry. It means. It has a lot of mean for a little tiny word. But it means _hunger._ Like it’s at the end of winter and nothing grows and nothing’s left and you’re crazy and you’d do anything to stave it off.”

“Okay…”

“That’s why they’re here.” Anny turned his forehead to Essem’s thigh. “They’re starving. I don’t know for what. But.” He tapped his forehead against Essem’s leg. “People eat each other sometimes, you know that? I saw it."

“You’ve told me."

“Then you know.”

Essem put his hand on Anny’s head. Anny pressed into him. They watched the fires below.

 

*

 

Three days later, it snowed.

Essem picked black from his fingernails.

Anny -

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anaxitho went home.

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY well I'm a nerd. notes/postscript/things i did not explain in the thing itself because lazy:
> 
> I'm mostly very bad at material culture. I was originally going to do a more explicit euhemeristic explanation of a myth, but most of the battle-mythologies available in the area of Tollense are ancient enough to be Proto-Indo-European derivations. (I'm just running with the "PIE-derived-language(s) spoken in Tollense area" thing for reasons including but not limited to the generally accepted westward movement from the PIE Urheimat + the Trundholm sun chariot.) So there has to be a medium between reconstructed/implied Proto-Germanic cultic innovations and reconstructed Proto-Indo-European cultic base. And - I'unno. Downsize.
> 
> I used a couple of different PIE/PG word lists to make up names. The elements in Essem's name are *h₂ews + *em: dawn-take. _Carpe Diem._ His sister's name is (badly) mediated between PIE *bʰerHǵs and PG *birkijǭ: birch. Think Björk. Hegleud is *h₂éḱmō + *leuk, stone-light.
> 
> Technically, since Anaxithon is a native Mycenaean Greek speaker, his name should be Wanaxitho [/w/ intact in Linear B inscriptions], but that looks ugly so I'm prematurely dropping the /w/. Anax + itho = king + horse. I don't know how the genitive functions in Mycenaean so take [w]anax as an adjective rather than itho as a genitive plural. Kingly horse. 
> 
> His father, Ehodu, and mother, Elovi, are given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to PIE origins of their names. Ehodu between *h₃ed- (hate) and odússomai (to hate). Ehodu, who went east on the instigation of some kind of damage to a queen, who saw a city fall, who after some great time returned home to his wife Elovi...([el-] recline, [lup-] carnivorous animal, cognate with the -elops element often considered to be in Penelope proper...a wolf, waiting)
> 
> I mean that makes like no mythic sense but maybe Anaxitho went home and told tales and that caught with the already building legend of the citadel to the east that fell seemingly aided by gods (specifically the earthshaker, Enaysdawon, E-ne-si-da-o-ne on certain tablets). People make myths and people remember strangely and maybe the son returning after ten years blends in with what he says about his father.
> 
> Essem won't be remembered, because there is no semblance of writing to keep the memories. Because whoever he was as an individual is overborne by the bonecrush outside. And why that crush was there - who knows?
> 
> Whatever god drew them there, whatever argument between prophets, how long the prophets took to collect their faithful, whatever the hell they were doing (human sacrifice isn't unknown in the early Bronze Age): that has been forgotten, but they left their homes, and came north during a cooling period, and the slaughter must have terrified, terrified, terrified, enough to inspire more movement, and ripples, maybe down to the sunskimmed sea.
> 
> math is hard what is a population
> 
> (and it's not actually super important but you know. The place of the dead, the bones cooling and covered, frosted over, in the north: HELHEIM. Lord Thunar should be obvious.)
> 
> Shout out to Calvert Watkins. Title's a line from Schleicher's Fable. Mins is the first word of the Iliad, mangled.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
